Marijuana Policy Project

To the editor:

Your editorial includes powerful information on the futility of the United States war on drugs but then makes the fatuous recommendation that the next administration should provide funds to reform Mexico's judicial system — a process that is already under way.

Mexico faces a killing spree affecting thousands of innocent people that is financed by American money going to the drug cartels that fight for dominance of the lucrative United States market for illegal drugs. The earnings from this trade amount to at least $15 billion a year — enough to buy arms to outgun the Mexican police and bribe underpaid security officials.

We can't buy our way out of this culpability with a few hundred million dollars of aid and irrelevant advice. The remedies lie on our side of the border. We need to curb demand by treating our addicts and by decriminalizing drug use, reduce the street price of drugs and thus the gains of the drug lords.

Sidney Weintraub, economist, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington